Darcey’s brain dump on all sorts of things on her favorite subject….Money! Email: darcey.martin@d2dsolutions.com

Are you a HENRY?

So I was reading this article in Fortune about HENRY’s, had never heard about this probably because I am not a HENRY. What is it you may ask? High Earner, Not Rich Yet. This is the catagory of household’s that make 250K-500K per year. It was an article about a group of usually dual income families, dr’s, lawyers, high execs, that perhaps could get nailed by new tax codes. Fortune featured young families usually with 2 children. As a I was reading, the numbers were crazy….4-8K mortgage, 12-16K taxes per year, 28K tuition for elementary school, daycare 3K per month per child, packing away 3-4K per month for kids college, have to go to Ivy league. The numbers they were talking were crazy. Well, I got the next Fortune magazine, and the feedback from previous articles was in there. According to the magazine a 15:1 ratio of letters received was sentiments like “Would you like a little cheese with your whine?” for the HENRY’s. So the question is, do these “HENRY’s” as they call them choose to do this to themselves, one woman complaining that they have to watch what they spend the second half of each month, not knowing if they will make it to the next paycheck. That got me to thinking, it isn’t really about what you make at all…. How can a household making 500K be living paycheck to paycheck? But the old saying rings true, it is not what you make but what you spend. I think I had mentioned it before, but a client I had, had more cash flow(money left over after expenses each month) straight out of college making 26-28K per year than when she was making over 70K per year. So lessons learned, we may all need to take a look at our bottom lines in this economy, are we living above our means or below our means and which will get us to where we want to be faster? What are you spending money on now that you were not spending on 5-10 years ago? The question is, could/should you go back? What would it take?